Like a cat with nine lives, Ryzom
announces this science-fiction MMORPG is making another comeback, following
another brush with receivership (story) that's had the game
offline for some time now. They've been running in an invitation-only mode for a
while, and are now inviting anyone who has ever had a Ryzom account (even a
trial account) to check things out as they prepare for a full re-launch. Here's
word:

In order to keep you informed on what is going on with the new
Ryzom, we wanted first to tell you that we are all really very happy and very
proud to work, and for some of us work again, on the magical world of Ryzom. We
wanted also to sincerely apologize for not having been able to talk to you
earlier. Unfortunately we had a lot of work to do to revive our fabulous planet;
tonnes of terabytes of blood, sweat and tears... hard drives to recover, check,
and deal with... countless Kami, Karavan, Kitins, and friends to find and put
back in place, all in order to reawaken Ryzom and to prepare it for your next
visit.

But now we are all very pleased to share with you our joy that the hardest part
is behind us.

Yes, our servers have already been revived in a testing phase for several weeks
now, and with the help of our great CSR team, we have worked hard to repair
Ryzom to its former glory. We mowed lawns, trimmed hedges, pulled weeds, and fed
the Yubos which were feeling very hungry and abandoned.

These past weeks we also re-opened the servers to our former Ryzom subscribers
to thank them all for their patience with a totally free VIP access and as we
are very happy with how this VIP phase progressed we have now decided to expand
the access to our servers to everybody who already had an active account, free
trial included. Yes, even if you previously only had a free trial you can now
once more log into Ryzom for free with all your stored characters! The only
restrictions still applied to the free trial accounts will be the level cap and
the geographical limitation to the starter island "Ruins of Silan", but these
restrictions will not last long either! We will keep you posted on all of this
when the time comes.

ATTENTION for those of you waiting to step onto Atys for the first time, please
don't forget that we are still in a re-launch and testing phase. This means that
Ryzom is still closed to newcomers as the creation of new accounts is not yet
permitted. If you don't already have an active Ryzom account you won't be able
to play Ryzom yet.

Don't worry though, we plan to reopen the account activation pages shortly; once
again, we will let you know as soon as it happens.

Thank you for your loyalty and above all for your patience. The new Ryzom team
bids you a very warm welcome and is looking forward to seeing you again in our
world...

This was a very interesting MMO with many unique gameplay elements. It's good to see it back on its feet again. The only problem I had was that the quests beyond the "starter island" were uninteresting and didn't really convey any overall storyline. I was hoping to find out more about the origins of the planet, the real agenda behind the factions, etc. I'm sure it's tough with such a small design team.